2=1: The end of the Experiment

Background (Music)
I was raised on all sorts of classical music... it often flowed through our home. It was mood music.

I was also raised on electronics, and built my own noise-making circuitry... Walter/Wendy Carlos' "Switched-on Bach" synthesizer music often flowed through my room. It was MOOG music.

So, I guess it is no surprise that my personal musical tastes have always bounced between the rich sonorities of symphonic woodwinds/strings/brass... and the unearthly-but-intriguing tones of synthesized instruments. I've always been interested in the baroque/classical musical forms, as well as experimental algorithmic/computer-generated compositions... two very different ways of creating music.

When I began seriously focusing on composing and publicly posting my music (as "serious" as a hobby can be), I initially confined myself to real-world instrument sounds and conventional compositions. But soon the experimental side of me wanted to explore and share. I had begun finding really interesting web sites, information, and software programs that let me play with computer-generated music and wild-sounding synthesizers, in ways I wished were possible decades before. I had stumbled into a candy shop, and there were many other people interested in these things too. So I thought I would try sharing some of my own experimental creations as well.

But these were strange and untamed pieces. They didn't play well with others. I was worried that, like oil and vinegar, my more polished conventional pieces and my wild experimental pieces would clash, and people interested in one style would not be interested in the other. Or worse, after hearing just one of my pieces, they would assume all my music was that style, and ignore the rest. What to do?

I decided to create a separate online music account, and put all my experimental stuff in there. I also chose initially not to connect the two accounts to each other... this new account would stand on its own for awhile, so I could see what people thought of the experimental music by itself.

What is in a name?
My Schwansongs "label" already had the account name "Drakonis" on my main music website, Macjams.com, as well as other places like MySpace.com and Alonetone.com. It was time to come up with a different name for this new experimental account. Hmmm...


Well, on circuit boards, the main building blocks that make up the electronics are called "integrated circuits", or I.C.s for short. On the circuit board, the spots for these IC's are usually numbered, so that they can be easily identified and assembled... and they are given names like IC1, IC2, IC3, etc. Given my love of electronics and wordplay, I decided to call the new account "IC42", referring to both a position on a circuit card, and a nod to "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", and a hint that I am overseeing two accounts.

Hakucho's Swan-song
I never intended this to remain a secret account, so it is now time to unmask the identity of the "IC42 Experiment". I have added links to cross-connect all my accounts, so people can find my two styles more easily, if they are interested. Don't worry, I will always be writing music in both styles, the experimental ic42 world will live on and produce new music and art and videos. I just will not keep the ic42 identity a secret any more. I also wish to thank the small circle of friends who discovered the IC42 identity early on, and kept it secret with me. I appreciate your help and patience during the experiment.

With that said, I will be retiring "Hakucho", the mysteriously laconic guy behind ic42. "Hakucho" was my old nickname when I was in Japanese language class decades ago. The bird we call "Swan" in English is called "Hakucho" in Japanese. In German, it is called "Schwan"... so the nickname always fit me nicely.

Coda
To wrap things up, I should mention where you can find my conventional and unconventional pieces of music. The complete set of "SchwanSongs" music, artwork and videos can be found at these web spots:

Traditional (Drakonis):
Macjams (complete set), iCompositions, MySpace, AloneTone, YouTube

Experimental (IC42):
Macjams (complete set), MySpace, AloneTone,
PhotoBucket

So now you know that IC42 is me too, and that I am not going to change anything or go anywhere. I do hope that you will continue to listen to (and hopefully enjoy) all my music (and from here you may now have discovered some new music to listen to.) And if any readers are interested in more information on some of my music creation tools and techniques, drop me a note and I will offer some tips and tidbits here.

ttfn,
Eduard aka Drakonis aka hakucho aka ic42

Postscript
Here are a couple of ic42 examples... click here to read the story and listen to the music for a new take on Halloween.

Below is an algorithmically-generated piece of music, dancing with some hypnotic fractal patterns (seeing it directly from the Photobucket account is a little better than this embedded version.)

Up for Promotion

One of the fun things about traveling and shooting videos is that I continue to learn about all sorts of things I never knew before.  It is a big world out there, full of all sorts of fun people with intriguing hobbies and jobs.  On our recent trip to Eugene Oregon while visiting the big "Black Sheep Gathering" fiber festival, I not only interviewed organizers of the event (see prior post), but also shot a couple of  interview/promotion style videos for some vendors at the show.  My wife and I thought these would be a nice personal touch to add to the vendors' web sites or blogs, giving other potential customers a much more engaging introduction to the proprietor and their products.  This is a new idea we are trying out here at SchwanSongs, and if you might be interested in a similar "video introduction", you may contact us (e-mail: video-at-schwansongs-dot-com) for surprisingly reasonable rates for such a warm addition to your on-line presence.

Here are a couple of examples of our work:

(1) Miryha Runnerstrom has a roving/yarn store called "Blarney Yarn", where you can order all sorts of gorgeous hand-dyed fibers for spinning/knitting here: http://www.blarneyyarn.com

(2) Lori Lawson runs her roving/yarn store called "Capistrano Fiber Arts" out of her home studio in San Juan Capistrano, California. We interviewed her up at the Eugene "Black Sheep Gathering" show, where she gave us a tour of some of her products. Her on-line store is at: http://capistranofiberarts.etsy.com

Spinning a Yarn, Part 1

June. Summer Vacation. The annual wool and fiber show. Let's take a road trip! My wife, being an avid wool spinner/dyer/knitter/teacher, wanted to take the rest of us on her second annual adventure up to Eugene, Oregon, to a big 3-day sheep/wool/processing/selling convention, called "The Black Sheep Gathering"... probably one of the biggest of its kind on the West Coast. We would also do a number of other things on the way up and back, like visit my sister who moved up to Oregon recently, visit some of my music buddies, tour a wildlife rescue center, see a honey-processing plant... and since I'm involved, we would be taking LOTS of video along the way. Well, the trip was a huge success, we all had a grand time and met wonderful people along the way, and now I have mountains of raw video footage to assemble into segments of our trip. The main goal was to do some preliminary shoots of the Black Sheep event itself, vendors, competitions, judging, get interviews... and put together some videos that would give a flavor for what goes on there, since not many people know about this.

Well, after a month of video editing, the first movie is now available. This is a 9 minute interview, as a high-level overview of many of the events that go on here. I spent a lot of time arranging the background video during the interview to show what Peggy (the speaker) was talking about. She talks about the judging events, the sheep and goats, the competitions, and some history. I am offering these videos to the BSG volunteers, in case they may want to use them on their web site to help get more interest in their event.



The next videos I will work on will focus on more specific events and vendors. I also have really intriguing videos of the bee/honey farm, and of the wildlife rescue center... those are coming up next!

As if, from a dream...

Here is another quick glimpse at ideas from my huge "Fractal Serenity" music video project, still in progress. This particular music-video is a "character study" of one of the strange plants that grows in this dream... the "Glass Orchid".

The tasty cherry color was used on the petals, after chatting with the marvelous musician Hoon, who mentioned his love of that particular candy-like color. The "Fractal Serenity" music, was initially completely computer-generated, then I massaged and re-wrote areas by hand to soften some of the rough edges, and this harsh-and-soft dreamy music will be lengthened and reworked into the soundscape for the full-length music video of the same name.

The computer graphics were hand-coded in the C-like computer text language of the freeware POV-Ray ray-tracer software... I still don't use modelers, but instead type this all up by hand.

And as always, there's a bit of (Russian) wordplay in the title. I hope you enjoy the surreal dreamy ride!

What makes you salivate?

Chocolate, perhaps? How about some beautifully cooked bacon?

Hold that thought...

This movie is an out-take from a recent sheep-shearing movie my wife and I took back in April... (posted in the prior blog entry below.)

It turns out that there is not much to do while the sheep shearer does his thing, so everyone else just stands around and talks between sheep-grabs.

So... please listen to the silly conversational banter we were having (over the wind noise) in the beginning of this movie. Now fast-forward to a couple of months later, when this local news video pops up, and my wife and I are floored, they actually made this concoction we joked about and took it to the fair! And people are eating it! How funny.

Annual haircut... for sheep

My wife and I headed out east to Descanso to a small farm in April (annual sheep shearing time), and as my wife bought some of the fleeces for herself and friends to wash and spin into yarn, I took some video of this interesting process that not many people out here know about. Wool yarn just shows up on the rack at Walmart, right? Well, not quite... there's a lot of work involved in wrestling down a 400 pound sheep, holding her steady and giving her a haircut. And then there's the washing and combing and dying and spinning of the wool, but those are future videos. For now, let's shear some sheep.

Elephant Seals

Sorry about that, life happened for a while there, and I have neglected my blog! One of the places my wife and I stopped at, while driving to Big Sur and back along Highway 1 on the California coast, was "Elephant Seal Beach", near San Simeon. In the Winter, the females give birth to their pups, and you get some great close-up opportunities (with a nice zoom lens, anyway) of these amazing creatures. The following video shows some of the adult males bellowing, and some of the females re-positioning themselves to protect the babies, and even a pup just born, umbilical cord still attached.



Movie Shot with a Canon GL2 video camera. Music "Quixotic Dreams" by schwansongs.com

Hope you enjoy!